In this video Thomas Heatherwick discusses his design. I personally love the idea that each copper petal came with a competing nation and will go back to that nation.

Plus this is a little bit about the man himself from his company website - which has images of his work - it's very impressive!

Thomas is an Honorary Fellow of the RIBA and a Senior Fellow at the Royal College of Art. He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from four British universities – Sheffield Hallam, Brighton, Dundee and Manchester Metropolitan. He has won the Prince Philip Designers Prize and in 2006, was the youngest practitioner to be appointed a Royal Designer for Industry.

You can also see an exhibition of the work of Heatherwick Studio at the Victoria & Albert Museum until 30th September. It now includes a model of the cauldron and how it works.

Moving on - today's post contains items from the last two weeks. I'm trying to ease up on posting over the next month or so in order to (1) have a bit of a break which helps me keep my enthusiasm for blogging and (2) to accommodate a pinched radial nerve in my arm which is hovering between rather painful and excruciating!

Plus a big thank you to all those who pushed my subscribers above 4,000 this last week

Artists and Art Bloggers

Artists

You can see Olympic Posters by various Leading Artists in various places around London at the moment. David Lee has something to say about them in his latest Leader Article for The Jackdaw - Olympic posters: our native genius

Olympic Posters for London 2012 in the Olympic Games Shop in John Lewis Westfield
- which overlooks the Olympic Park and the Stadium

Almost a third of visual and applied artists earn less than £5,000 a year from their creative work, according to a survey conducted last year by Artists' Interaction and Representation (AIR); 57% of the 1,457 respondents said that less than a quarter of their total income was generated by their art practices and only 16% of them paid into a private pension fund, raising questions about how professional artists will support themselves once they reach retirement age.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED: Thanks to Alyson Stanfield for highlighting a post by Liz Crain (Liz Crain Ceramics) A Frank Look at Money and Venues in which she unpicks the costs, the opportunity costs and the potential losses of selling work at different venues - it's what I'd call an eye-opener!

a link to a new a new art book site Making A Mark Book List I've created. The site lists the art books I've bought this year (or at least it will be once I've finished it - I've still got lots to add in!).

For example, in the age of the Internet, where most books are selling online, the cover needs to be very simple so that it works as a small image on Amazon. It’s hard to imagine going through months of design iterations for a cover that is going to be seen by most potential buyers as a photo on Amazon.

As ever, this year is as popular with the public as any art exhibition, with large numbers jostling and genuinely engaging with the work eagerly discussing merits and demerits of more conspicuous pieces.

To this thrilling event 341,500 visitors flocked last year. Thrilling? Never quite that, there have indeed been years when the quality has been dire enough for me to suggest that the award should be put out of its misery

Art Societies

I should have been to see a special exhibition by The Royal Watercolour Society which opened at the Bankside Gallery (next to Tate Modern) last week. Picturing Britain 2012 is on display for the duration of the Olympic Games. I'm hoping to get to see it this week.

James Gurney (Gurney Journey) has written an interesting blog post about Measures of Greatness which focuses on the French artoist Ernest Meissonier - and if you've never heard of him you are recommended to read the post (and the comments)

Their resignations, they said, could be read as a protest at the commercial, pop-culture direction of the museum at the expense of education and scholarship.

Art Education

Workshops

Last Sunday I went to a workship for The Next Generation (blog post to follow soon). This post The Next Generation - Portraiture for Teenagers summarises how the educational side of the National portrait Gallery promotes and supports learning about portraiture.

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